“I know. Everything is worse.”
She nodded. “I wish things were different. I don’t know if there is a happy ending this time. You need to understand that.” I felt a lump in my throat, and I tried to swallow it away.
“I can’t figure this out. I know it has something to do with John Breed’s Eighteenth Moon, but we can’t find him. I don’t know what we’re supposed to be fighting. The Eighteenth Moon? Abraham? Sarafine and Hunting?”
She shook her head. “It’s not that simple, or that easy. Evil doesn’t always have one face, Ethan.”
“Yes, it does. We’re talking about Light and Dark. Things don’t get any more black and white than that.”
“I think we both know that isn’t true.” She was talking about Lena. “You’re not responsible for the whole world, Ethan. You aren’t the judge of it all. You’re just a boy.”
I reached up and threw myself at my mom, into her lap. I expected my hands to pass right through her. But I could feel her, as if she was really there, as if she was still alive, even though when I looked at her she was still hazy. I clung to her until my fingers dug into her soft, warm shoulders.
It felt like a miracle to touch her again. Maybe it was.
“My little boy,” she whispered.
And I smelled her. I smelled everything—the tomatoes frying, the creosote she used to cover her books with in the archive. The smell of freshly cut graveyard grass, from the nights we spent there, watching those light-up crosses.
For a few minutes she held me, and it felt like she had never left at all. Then she let go, but I was still holding on to her.
For a few minutes, what we had, we knew.
Then I started to sob. I cried in a way I hadn’t since I was a kid. Since I fell down the stairs racing Matchbox cars on the banister, or off the top of the jungle gym in the schoolyard. This fall hurt more than any physical one ever could.
Her arms encircled me, as if I was a kid. “I know you’re angry at me. It takes a while to feel the truth.”
“I don’t want to feel it. It hurts too much.”
She hugged me tighter. “If you don’t feel it, you won’t be able to let it go.”
“I don’t want to let go.”
“You can’t fight fate. It was my time to go.” She sounded so sure, so at peace. Like Aunt Prue, when I was holding her hand at County Care. Or Twyla, when I saw her slipping away to the Otherworld on the night of the Seventeenth Moon.
It wasn’t fair. The people who were left behind never got to feel that sure of anything.
“I wish it wasn’t.”
“Me too, Ethan.”
“Your time to go. What does that mean, exactly?”
She smiled at me as she rubbed my back. “When the time comes, you’ll know.”
“I don’t know what to do anymore. I’m afraid I’m going to screw things up.”
“You’ll do the right thing, Ethan. And if you don’t, the right thing will find you. The Wheel of Fate is like that.”
I thought about what Aunt Prue said to me. The Wheel of Fate… It crushes us all.
I looked my mom in the eye and noticed her face was streaked with tears, just like mine. “What is it, Mom?”
“Not it, my sweet boy.” She touched my cheek as she began to fade softly back into the warm darkness. “Who.”
10.09
Catfight
A few days later, I was sitting in the good booth at the Dar-ee Keen, which unofficially belonged to Link now. Some nervous freshmen actually cleared out when we got there. I remembered my freshman year when that was Link and me. He was nodding at girls as they walked by our booth, and I was eating my weight in Tater Tots.
“They must be buying a different kind or something. These are actually good.” I popped another Tater Tot into my mouth. I hadn’t touched one in years. But today, they’d looked good up on the grimy menu board.
“Dude, I think you’re losin’ it. Even I never ate those things.”
I shrugged as Lena and Ridley slid into the booth with two malts. Ridley started drinking both of them. “Mmm. Raspberry.”
“Is that a first for you, Rid?” Link looked happy to see her. They were speaking again. I gave it five minutes until the bickering set in.
“Mmm. Oreo. Oh my God.” She stuck the straws into her mouth and started drinking both malts at the same time.
Lena looked disgusted and pulled out a bag of french fries. “What are you doing?”
“I wanted raspberry Oreo,” Ridley mumbled, the straws slipping out of her mouth.
I pointed at the sign over the register that read: ANYTHING YOU WANT, ANY WAY WE GOT IT. “You know you can order it like that.”
“I’d rather do it my way. It’s more fun. What are we talking about?”
Link tossed a wad of folded-up flyers onto the table. “The big deal is Savannah Snow’s party after the game against Summerville.”
“Well, have fun.” I stole one of Lena’s fries.
Link made a face. “Aw, man, first the Tater Tots, now this? How can you eat that crap? Smells like dirty hair and old oil.” He sniffed again. “And a rat or two.”
Lena dropped the bag.